Meteor Explodes Over Japan May6 2013

I keep thinking back to a History Channel show about asteroids and one of the interviewee's making the statement about the likelihood of the planet
getting hit by a large asteroid/meteor as being very low. He made this statement, and I'm paraphrasing here "We'd see a lot more meteors if we were
at risk". I'm not sure how old the show was but it sure seems to me that we are seeing a lot more sightings of things whizzing by the Earth. This to
me makes the interviewee's statement that much more scary (well, scary? I'm not too sure about that. Not to much to be scared about as far as
getting hit. I'm more scared of man's cruelty against man for instance during the aftermath). I totally agree though, the more things flying by, the
larger the chance that one of these things will hit us. They always say, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Now the question is are we
really seeing more or are we just looking harder? Could be we are just seeing the normal amount of space rocks, we are just looking up more. I don't
know. I have heard that the solar system is passing through a debris cloud (Nebula cloud?). Can anyone provide any more insight to this "cloud"?
Thanks

More and more comets and asteroids every year you say? Possibly, but why or why not?

We are on a 30 million year cycle, passing through the galactic plane, following our sun, with all planets in tow. The closer to the galactic plane
we get, the slightly more active the Earth's neighborhood may become. For all practical purposes, the changes happen so slow, relative to the human
time frame, that there is no way we can actually see a difference in the skies from century to century. Our ability to record, capture, predict,
communicate..etc, change FAR faster than the physical changes in space take place. Most likely, there is either some other local influence, or even
more likely, we are simply far better at collecting and sharing data now, than we were 10000 or even 100 years ago.

Some theories pose that two cycles ago, about 65 million years, we passed through the galactic plane, and got hit hard. This may have ended the
Dinosaur age.

The fireballs being discussed in this thread were caused by Earth crossing the stream of dust (and a few slightly larger meteoroids) ejected by
Halley's Comet. We pass through this dust stream twice a year, but this year we happened to pass through a part of the dust stream that was more
densely populated with meteoroids than most years, giving us an outburst.

Whilst outbursts from meteor showers don't occur every year (if they did, they would not be outbursts!) they do occur from time to time. Notable
outbursts and even storms have occurred in the recent past, the best known of which were the Leonids which were in storm mode a little over a decade
ago. I was fortunate enough to observe a "storm" of Leonid fireballs in
1998 (by pure chance). It "rained" fireballs all night, and I saw hundreds over a period of a few hours, some of them bright enough to light the
ground/buildings around me like it was daylight.

There was a true storm (defined as being over 1000 meteors per hour) when the Leonids peaked the following year, and again in
2001 when 4500 meteors per hour at peak were observed in some locations, and I was once again
fortunate to witness this with my own two eyes!

Before that In 1966 there was a great storm of meteors, and for about 10-15 minutes, meteors
were falling at a rate of 40-50 per second. At the moment the Leonids only produce around 10-15 meteors per hour at peak, which is their normal
strength.

These were big storms of meteors and fireballs, that make this years eta Aquarid outburst look tame in comparison!

Asteroids on the other hand are another kettle of fish all together. They are large objects, usually made of much harder material than that which
constitutes cometary meteoroids, and they generally enter the atmosphere at significantly lower speed. Because of this they can penetrate deeply into
Earth's atmosphere, and larger asteroids pose a significant threat. They are also random and unpredictable, unlike annual meteor showers.

The meteoroids ejected by comets, whilst not very large, hit the atmosphere fast, and because they are fragile, they break up almost immediately in a
bright flash of light, making they appear impressive when a "large" one hits.

You have to take into account that camera tech has improved significantly, as well as prices coming down. Today's cameras are more sensitive, and make
meteors seem brighter and more impressive than older cameras. There are also many more cameras pointed at the sky today. We would not be discussing
this outburst were it not for these factors - and probably many of the other recent (asteroidal) fireballs that have been posted here on ATS. These
are certainly not the only factors involved, but they do play a significant part in how we perceive the subject.

It should also be noted, as at least one previous member posted, that even the annual Perseid meteor shower usually puts on as good a show as this
years eta Aquarid meteor shower did. I try to observe the Perseids every year, and have seen some spectacular Perseid fireballs in previous
years!

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